saw again the blood dripping from its blond hair, the outline of its shattered head. That model was mostly cloned human tissue, not flesh over a metal skeleton like the T-101s. Undoubtedly made that way so they'd be better at fooling people into thinking they were human.
In nightmares he still saw it—dead; organically dead but still moving—strike his mother with a knife-hand blow that went into her gut like a bowie knife, still heard Sarah's cry of agony as she folded and fell to the floor, a long, endless fall.
Then, in his dreams, things seemed to speed up until everything moved at an impossible rate. They ran up stairs, ran in and out of the building, watched the night blossom into flame as they set off the bombs that destroyed Cyberdyne once again. Stopping Skynet, once again.
His mother had been unconscious the last time he saw her, looking so small and helpless beside Miles Dyson. There had been no chance of saying good-bye, no hope that she would wake, and at the time, little hope that she would survive.
But he'd done what she'd trained him to do. He'd turned his back, put the mission first, and left her in the hands of a stranger. And though he felt ashamed, he
knew that Sarah Connor would be proud.
Suddenly Dieter held up a hand and John froze, looking ahead to where the former commando was staring. Then John saw it, too; a brightening between the trees, as if the olive-green gloom lightened ahead of them. The vegetation thickened in that direction, too, no longer partially shaded out by the upper stories; now it looked more like Hollywood's conception of a rain-forest jungle, so thick that nobody could move far through it.
He moved quietly up beside von Rossbach and listened. In a few moments, as the two men stood still, birds and insects began to make their myriad noises again.
John and Dieter looked at each other. No other humans around then, or the wildlife would have stayed quiet. At least the ones in their immediate vicinity would have. Dieter signaled that they should split up but stay within sight of each other and approach the brighter patch of forest; John had learned military sign language about the time he was toilet-trained. The younger man nodded his understanding and moved off into the undergrowth.
'It's bigger than it used to be,' John said, walking carefully up to the Austrian
over the slickly muddy ground. 'Almost a road now.'
'I doubt the Indians did it,' von Rossbach said, flicking a hand at some tire tracks in the mud. 'Unless they drive those little all-terrain buggies.'
'Not likely,' John said, shaking his head. He remembered the local tribesmen and women as perfectly willing to accept rides, but showing no great desire to learn to drive themselves.
Dieter's head came up and John was already looking down the trail to where a faint noise disturbed the wilderness. Then they faded into the jungle as one, weapons at the ready. The only thing coming down that trail would be trouble, whether miners or Indians.
A group of five men came into view, unshaven and with the skinny muscularity of manual work and bad diet; they were in tattered shorts and shirts, several with bandannas tied around their heads. All of them carried machetes, and two of them had pistols at their waists. With them was an Indian, his hands bound behind his back in a way that must have been agony, blood streaming down his face from a cut on his forehead and what looked like a broken nose. He was an athletic-looking man in early middle age with bowl-cropped raven hair and a few tattoos, naked save for a breechclout.
One of his captors idly thwacked at the thick greenery beside the trail with his machete, casting an occasional angry glance at their captive's battered, impassive face.
'Hey, Teodoro, why can't we just kill him?' he suddenly burst out in Brazilian Portuguese.
The angry man's voice had an undertone of some other accent, and his hair was sandy-colored. John's mind ticked him off as from southern Brazil, one of the areas settled by Germans or Italians or East Europeans during the nineteenth century. The others were typical Brazilians in appearance, ranging from African to Mediterranean and mixtures in between.
A thickset man with his black hair tied in a little knob on top of his head sighed and threw an appealing glance up at the canopy above them; evidently as close to a leader as this bunch had.
'Raoul, for the thirty-third time, he's a chief, he's important, we keep him as a hostage and those fucking Indios stop killing us and stealing and breaking our equipment.' He looked over his shoulder, one hand resting on his sidearm. 'Did you hear me this time?'
Raoul answered him with a glare and a vicious swipe of his machete through a thick fibrous plant. One of the men gave the chief a hard shove and laughed as the Indian stumbled to his knees and then fell forward onto his face, helpless to break his fall. The others whooped and moved in, kicking and punching the man as he struggled to get back onto his feet. Teodoro sighed and rubbed his forehead.
'You better get up fast, Chief,' he said. 'They're just gonna keep on kickin'
otherwise.'
John looked at Dieter, outrage in his eyes. But the big man shook his head. This wasn't their fight, they were just passing through. Getting involved here wouldn't further their own agenda; in fact, it might stop it cold if John got killed in some misguidedly noble effort to save the captive. And Sarah would never forgive him.
The younger man lifted his mini-Uzi and tipped his head toward the trail. Dieter tightened his lips impatiently and shook his head again. The Austrian signaled that they would hold their positions. It visibly puzzled John and he frowned, gesturing toward the brutal scene on the trail directly in front of them, his face pleading. Dieter signed that they would hold their places and signaled for silence.
John turned his head away and glared at what was happening on the trail. Von Rossbach could almost feel him seething.
Then, without warning, the boy stepped onto the road and fired off a few rounds.
'
Instead of freezing, Raoul flung his machete at John's head. John stepped back, leaning to the side to avoid it, and his feet slid out from under him in the mud.
He went down flat on his back, his arms flung wide, and the nearest miner threw himself forward, grabbing John's gun hand in a grip like a mangle. Connor threw a punch at the man's head, bringing up his knee to slam it into his captor's side.
The man grunted and tried to elbow John in the throat.
As the group of miners shouted encouragement to their friend and insults at John, they moved forward, abandoning their previous victim.
Dieter exploded from the jungle like a beast out of legend, kicking the first man he reached hard enough to fling him across the muddy trail, where he landed in a heap and didn't move again. Reaching out, von Rossbach grabbed another by the hair and with a quick flex of the massive arms and shoulders flung him at a tree beside the trail.
John heard the
He shook the mud from his gun and grimaced.
Another man who'd been advancing on John stared at Dieter in amazement for just a moment too long, and the Austrian reached out, took two handfuls of greasy hair, and smashed the man's face down onto his uprising knee. The man Dieter had kicked had struggled to his feet and turned to run; von Rossbach took two long strides toward him.
John saw Teodoro yank his gun from its holster and he moved. As Dieter's victim dropped unconscious to the ground the Austrian spun to find John taking care of the fifth man.
The younger man's fingers were clamped down on the miner's carotid arteries as Teodoro pawed feebly at
